Qi Benyu, Mao Aide With No Remorse After China’s Cultural Revolution, Dies at 84
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

BEIJING — Qi Benyu, a Chinese Communist Party propagandist who climbed to power in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution; served as an aide to Mao Zedong and his powerful wife, Jiang Qing; and spent the rest of his life defending their legacy, died on Wednesday in Shanghai. He was 84.

He had been treated for cancer, Ye Yonglie, a historian who visited Mr. Qi in a hospital last month, said in confirming the death.

Mr. Qi (pronounced chee) was the last surviving member of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, which Mao created in May 1966 to guide his tumultuous movement. To the end of Mr. Qi’s life, he revered Mao and remained unrepentant about the upheavals that erupted across China 50 years ago, even though he was purged by Mao and then jailed for nearly 20 years.

“Back then, the chairman told me with great assurance that a young fellow like me might be able to see the dawn of communism so long as we continued making revolution,” Mr. Qi wrote in an essay published several years ago. “But, sadly, even now I see no such dawn.”

Recently, however, Mr. Qi said that President Xi Jinping had restored his hopes.

Mr. Qi’s death went unmentioned in party newspapers, which have also been overwhelmingly mute about the anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political purges, persecution and violence in which a million or more people died beginning in 1966.

The 50th anniversary is a sensitive time for Mr. Xi, who has denounced dwelling on the upheavals that traumatized China, including his own family, under Mao.

Mr. Qi was born in Shandong Province, in eastern China, in May 1931, and moved with his family to Shanghai, where he immersed himself in books, including Marxist works and Mao’s writings.

He became a student activist and formally joined the Communist Party around 1949. At 19, he went to work as an aide in Zhongnanhai, the walled compound reserved for the party leadership in central Beijing, editing news summaries, collating letters and helping to edit Mao’s works.

An essay he wrote won praise from Mao in 1963 — a dizzying boost for a young aide — and he formed a friendship with Jiang Qing. Unlike many party veterans who later denounced Ms. Jiang and blamed her for Mao’s deepening extremism, Mr. Qi always defended her and maintained that she had been working at Mao’s behest.

“I think that she was worthy of the chairman and she never lost face for him,” Mr. Qi said in his memoirs, which were released by a leftist Chinese website. Ms. Jiang killed herself in prison in 1991.

“She really was a female hero; Chairman Mao chose well,” Mr. Qi said.

Mao became convinced that the Chinese Revolution was imperiled by compromise, and his answer was the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Qi became a power broker in his mid-30s, helping to draft programmatic documents and channeling the fury of the Red Guards, groups of fervently radical students, against veteran Communist officials.

“I spoke to Jiang Qing over the phone virtually every day, sometimes several times a day, reporting to her on what we’d gathered about the situation, and she then reported this to Chairman Mao,” Mr. Qi recalled. “When we on the Cultural Revolution Small Group spoke out, that could shape the whole movement, and of course this inevitably led to even more people disliking us.”

In his later memoirs and interviews, Mr. Qi distanced himself from the violence of the Cultural Revolution. But historians said he played down his role in the persecution of purged officials.

“To the end of his life, he kept his faith in Mao Zedong and the correctness of the Cultural Revolution,” said Mr. Ye, the historian. “He believed it was right, so there was no need for reflection.”

In 1968, Mao sought to rein in the worst of the chaos he had unleashed, and he turned against Mr. Qi and other ideologues, who were accused of sowing instability in the military, Mao’s bulwark of ultimate control. Mr. Qi was jailed for the rest of the Cultural Revolution.

After Mao’s death in 1976, Mr. Qi, like Ms. Jiang and other militants, was put on trial. He was convicted and sentenced in 1983 for “counterrevolutionary incitement” and other crimes and was released in 1986. He spent the rest of his life in obscurity, working in a library in Shanghai and writing books about ancient topics under a pen name. There was no word on his immediate survivors.

Mr. Qi won a following among Chinese neo-Maoists, who admired his unwavering defense of the Cultural Revolution. In an interview in 2014 with Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, Mr. Qi also praised Mr. Xi.

“Xi Jinping is the only national leader since Mao Zedong’s era who really fights corruption, and doesn’t just mouth words about it,” Mr. Qi said.

戚本禹出殯 「文革」造反派被監控

前中央文革小組最後一名離世的成員戚本禹昨日在上海舉殯，200多人參加遺體告別儀式；各地不少左派團體如「紅歌會」、「毛學會」等送花圈，還有「文革」造反派成員從外地趕到。上海當局要求戚家控制到場人員和花圈名單，已故中共中央副主席林彪的女兒林立衡想以真名送花圈，不過遭到禁止。

香港明報報導，戚本禹4月20日因患胃癌在上海病逝，終年85歲，他的遺體告別儀式昨在上海龍華殯儀館舉行。殯儀館場外的指示牌用的是戚本禹另一名字「戚文」，靈堂橫額則稱「沉痛悼念戚本禹先生」。戚於1983年已被開除黨籍，因此不能稱為「同志」，遺體覆以普通黃布。告別儀式由戚家私人舉辦，戚生前所在單位上海圖書館有送花圈。

戚本禹女兒戚英致悼詞時介紹父親生平，不過，她只是簡略提到「前半生寫作政治文章，後半生研究中華文化」，又稱父親「熱愛黨、熱愛祖國、熱愛人民、熱愛社會主義事業」云云。

在靈堂內外放有多個來自山西、河南等地的「紅歌會」、「毛學會」等左派團體的花圈，經濟學家張五常夫婦，文革中上海「寫作組」負責人朱永嘉、清華大學教授汪暉、香港理工大學教授嚴海蓉、對外經貿大學教授陽和平等人均有送花圈。與戚本禹生前交往甚密的「造反派」領袖如蒯大富、韓愛晶等人則不見蹤影。

據報導，有上海造反派成員前晚開始被警察監控，昨日上午禁止出門，亦有人到殯儀館門口被禁止入內。已故中共中央副主席林彪的女兒林立衡（林豆豆）原本有意送花圈，不過遭到阻止。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/world/asia/qi-benyu-mao-aide-with-no-remorse-afterchinas-cultural-revolution-dies-at-84.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20160426/c26qi/zh-hant/ 

2016-04-26 世界日報 中國新聞組